September 2007

This is great. thanks!Finally a site that defines atheism, and what i’m supposed to be. I agree with the other guy, though. Sky- god (i’m gonna smite you if you don’t worship me) worshipers are stupid.

I’m going to keep saying this until the day I die — you can’t judge someone as stupid because of their belief unless you know their reasons for the belief. For example, Whitley Strieber believes in visitors from other planets, and while I think he’s wrong, his reason for belief is that he remembers personal encounters with aliens. I think an intelligent person can believe in aliens for that reason, even though another intelligent person would not.

Also, just to get right down to it, I’m not going to call my grandmother stupid because she’s Catholic. The woman has been Catholic for 80+ years, and no amount of convincing would remove her core feeling of conviction. It’s effectively beyond her power to change and intelligence has nothing to do with it.

You also need to remember that there are perfectly intelligent people who are theists because they have not yet encountered facts that change their minds. When a person stops being a “sky-god believing” theist and starts being an atheist, do they suddenly become intelligent? No. They were intelligent while they were theists. It’s possible to be both intelligent and wrong, and from an atheist perspective, an intelligent theist is, at most, wrong.

Finally, there are plenty of theists who think that atheists are stupid. Do you really want to give such statements a hint of validity by making similar statements yourself? I don’t think so.